Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

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without them, struck her in quite another light, and
tempted her back to them.
When, after evening tea and a row by night in the
boat, Darya Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took
off her dress, and began arranging her thin hair for the
night, she had a great sense of relief.
It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna
was coming to see her immediately. She longed to be
alone with her own thoughts.
Chapter 23
Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to
see her, attired for the night. In the course of the day
Anna had several times begun to speak of matters near her
heart, and every time after a few words she had stopped:
‘Afterwards, by ourselves, we’ll talk about everything. I’ve
got so much I want to tell you,’ she said.
Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know
what to talk about. She sat in the window looking at
Dolly, and going over in her own mind all the stores of
intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible
beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it
seemed to her that everything had been said already.
‘Well, what of Kitty?’ she said with a heavy sigh,
looking penitently at Dolly. ‘Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn’t
she angry with me?’
‘Angry? Oh, no!’ said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.
‘But she hates me, despises me?’
‘Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn’t
forgiven.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Anna, turning away and looking out of
the open window. ‘But I was not to blame. And who is to
blame? What’s the meaning of being to blame? Could it
have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it
possibly have happened that you didn’t become the wife
of Stiva?’
‘Really, I don’t know. But this is what I want you to
tell me..’
‘Yes, yes, but we’ve not finished about Kitty. Is she
happy? He’s a very nice man, they say.’
‘He’s much more than very nice. I don’t know a better
man.’
‘Ah, how glad I am! I’m so glad! Much more than very
nice,’ she repeated.
Dolly smiled.
‘But tell me about yourself. We’ve a great deal to talk
about. And I’ve had a talk with...’ Dolly did not know
what to call him. She felt it awkward to call him either the
count or Alexey Kirillovitch.
‘With Alexey,’ said Anna, ‘I know what you talked
about. But I wanted to ask you directly what you think of
me, of my life?’
‘How am I to say like that straight off? I really don’t
know.’
‘No, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you
mustn’t forget that you’re seeing us in the summer, when
you have come to us and we are not alone.... But we
came here early in the spring, lived quite alone, and shall
be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But imagine
me living alone without him, alone, and that will be...I see
by everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be
half the time away from home,’ she said, getting up and
sitting down close by Dolly.
‘Of course,’ she interrupted Dolly, who would have
answered, ‘of course I won’t try to keep him by force. I
don’t keep him indeed. The races are just coming, his
horses are running, he will go. I’m very glad. But think of
me, fancy my position.... But what’s the use of talking
about it?’ She smiled. ‘Well, what did he talk about with
you?’
‘He spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and
it’s easy for me to be his advocate; of whether there is not
a possibility ...whether you could not...’ (Darya
Alexandrovna hesitated) ‘correct, improve your position....
You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if possible,
you should get married...’
‘Divorce, you mean?’ said Anna. ‘Do you know, the
only woman who came to see me in Petersburg was Betsy
Tverskaya? You know her, of course? Au fond, c’est la
femme la plus depravee qui existe. She had an intrigue
with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest
way. And she told me that she did not care to know me so
long as my position was irregular. Don’t imagine I would
compare...I know you, darling. But I could not help
remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?’ she
repeated.
‘He said that he was unhappy on your account and his
own. Perhaps you will say that it’s egoism, but what a
legitimate and noble egoism. He wants first of all to
legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband, to have a
legal right to you.’
‘What wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in
my position?’ she put in gloomily.
‘The chief thing he desires...he desires that you should
not suffer.’
‘That’s impossible. Well?’
‘Well, and the most legitimate desire—he wishes that
your children should have a name.’
‘What children?’ Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and
half closing her eyes.
‘Annie and those to come..’
‘He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no
more children.’
‘How can you tell that you won’t?’
‘I shall not, because I don’t wish it.’ And, in spite of all
her emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naive
expression of curiosity, wonder, and horror on Dolly’s
face.
‘The doctor told me after my illness..’
‘Impossible!’ said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.
For her this was one of those discoveries the
consequences and deductions from which are so immense
that all that one feels for the first instant is that it is
impossible to take it all in, and that one will have to reflect
a great, great deal upon it.
This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those
families of one or two children, which had hitherto been
so incomprehensible to her, aroused so many ideas,
reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she had
nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of
wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she had been
dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she was
horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too
complicated a problem.
‘N’est-ce pas immoral?’ was all she said, after a brief
pause.
‘Why so? Think, I have a choice between two
alternatives: either to be with child, that is an invalid, or to
be the friend and companion of my husband—practically
my husband,’ Anna said in a tone intentionally superficial
and frivolous.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very
arguments she had used to herself, and not finding the
same force in them as before.
‘For you, for other people,’ said Anna, as though
divining her thoughts, ‘there may be reason to hesitate;
but for me.... You must consider, I am not his wife; he
loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep
his love? Not like this!’
She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist
with extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of
excitement; ideas and memories rushed into Darya
Alexandrovna’s head. ‘I,’ she thought, ‘did not keep my
attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the first
woman for whom he betrayed me did not keep him by
being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and took
another. And can Anna attract and keep Count Vronsky in
that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses
and manners still more attractive and charming. And
however white and beautiful her bare arms are, however
beautiful her full figure and her eager face under her black
curls, he will find something better still, just as my
disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does.’
Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna
noticed this sigh, indicating dissent, and she went on. In
her armory she had other arguments so strong that no
answer could be made to them.
‘Do you say that it’s not right? But you must consider,’
she went on; ‘you forget my position. How can I desire
children? I’m not speaking of the suffering, I’m not afraid
of that. Think only, what are my children to be? Ill-fated
children, who will have to bear a stranger’s name. For the
very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed
of their mother, their father, their birth.’
‘But that is just why a divorce is necessary.’ But Anna
did not hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the
arguments with which she had so many times convinced
herself.
‘What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to
avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!’ She
looked at Dolly, but without waiting for a reply she went
on:
‘I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy
children,’ she said. ‘If they are not, at any rate they are not

unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I alone should be to
blame for it.’
These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna
had used in her own reflections; but she heard them
without understanding them. ‘How can one wrong
creatures that don’t exist?’ she thought. And all at once the
idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances,
have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had never
existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that
she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling,
mad ideas.
‘No, I don’t know; it’s not right,’ was all she said, with
an expression of disgust on her face.
‘Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I.... And
besides that,’ added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her
arguments and the poverty of Dolly’s objections, seeming
still to admit that it was not right, ‘don’t forget the chief
point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For
you the question is: do you desire not to have any more
children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And
that’s a great difference. You must see that I can’t desire it
in my position.’
Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt
that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay
between them a barrier of questions on which they could
never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.
Chapter 24
‘Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize
your position, if possible,’ said Dolly.
‘Yes, if possible,’ said Anna, speaking all at once in an
utterly different tone, subdued and mournful.
‘Surely you don’t mean a divorce is impossible? I was
told your husband had consented to it.’
‘Dolly, I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘Oh, we won’t then,’ Darya Alexandrovna hastened to
say, noticing the expression of suffering on Anna’s face.
‘All I see is that you take too gloomy a view of things.’
‘I? Not at all! I’m always bright and happy. You see, je
fais des passions. Veslovsky..’
‘Yes, to tell the truth, I don’t like Veslovsky’s tone,’
said Darya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.
‘Oh, that’s nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and that’s all;
but he’s a boy, and quite under my control. You know, I
turn him as I please. It’s just as it might be with your
Grisha.... Dolly!’— she suddenly changed the subject—
‘you say I take too gloomy a view of things. You can’t
understand. It’s too awful! I try not to take any view of it
at all.’
‘But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you
can.’
‘But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry
Alexey, and say I don’t think about it. I don’t think about
it!’ she repeated, and a flush rose into her face. She got up,
straightening her chest, and sighed heavily. With her light
step she began pacing up and down the room, stopping
now and then. ‘I don’t think of it? Not a day, not an hour
passes that I don’t think of it, and blame myself for
thinking of it...because thinking of that may drive me
mad. Drive me mad!’ she repeated. ‘When I think of it, I
can’t sleep without morphine. But never mind. Let us talk
quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first place, he won’t
give me a divorce. He’s under the influence of Countess
Lidia Ivanovna now.’
Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned
her head, following Anna with a face of sympathetic
suffering.
‘You ought to make the attempt,’ she said softly.
‘Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?’ she
said, evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand
times thought over and learned by heart. ‘It means that I,
hating him, but still recognizing that I have wronged
him—and I consider him magnanimous—that I humiliate
myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the effort;
I do it. Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent....
Well, I have received his consent, say...’ Anna was at that
moment at the furthest end of the room, and she stopped
there, doing something to the curtain at the window. ‘I
receive his consent, but my...my son? They won’t give
him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his
father, whom I’ve abandoned. Do you see, I love...
equally, I think, but both more than myself—two
creatures, Seryozha and Alexey.’
She came out into the middle of the room and stood
facing Dolly, with her arms pressed tightly across her
chest. I her white dressing gown her figure seemed more
than usually grand and broad. She bent her head, and with
shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Dolly, a
thin little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and
nightcap, shaking all over with emotion.
‘It is only those two creatures that I love, and one
excludes the other. I can’t have them together, and that’s
the only thing I want. And since I can’t have that, I don’t
care about the rest. I don’t care about anything, anything.
And it will end one way or another, and so I can’t, I don’t
like to talk of it. So don’t blame me, don’t judge me for
anything. You can’t with your pure heart understand all

that I’m suffering.’ She went up, sat down beside Dolly,
and with a guilty look, peeped into her face and took her
hand.
‘What are you thinking? What are you thinking about
me? Don’t despise me. I don’t deserve contempt. I’m
simply unhappy. If anyone is unhappy, I am,’ she
articulated, and turning away, she burst into tears.
Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and
went to bed. She had felt for Anna with all her heart while
she was speaking to her, but now she could not force
herself to think of her. The memories of home and of her
children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm
quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world
of her own seemed to her now so sweet and precious that
she would not on any account spend an extra day outside
it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go
back next day.
Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine
glass and dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of
which the principal ingredient was morphine. After
drinking it off and sitting still a little while, she went into
her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of
mind.
When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked
intently at her. He was looking for traces of the
conversation which he knew that, staying so long in
Dolly’s room, she must have had with her. But in her
expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of
reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always
bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the
consciousness of it, and the desire that it should affect him.
He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of,
but he hoped that she would tell him something of her
own accord. But she only said:
‘I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don’t you?’
‘Oh, I’ve known her a long while, you know. She’s
very good-hearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-aterre.
Still, I’m very glad to see her.’
He took Anna’s hand and looked inquiringly into her
eyes.
Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next
morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya
Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward journey.
Levin’s coachman, in his by no means new coat and
shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his coach with
the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy
determination into the covered gravel approach.
Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess
Varvara and the gentlemen of the party. After a day spent
together, both she and her hosts were distinctly aware that
they did not get on together, and that it was better for
them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that
now, from Dolly’s departure, no one again would stir up
within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their
conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet
she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that
that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the
life she was leading.
As she drove out into the open country, Darya
Alexandrovna had a delightful sense of relief, and she felt
tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at
Vronsky’s, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed
himself unasked:
‘Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats
was all they gave us. Everything cleared up till there
wasn’t a grain left by cockcrow. What are three pots? A
mere mouthful! And oats now down to forty-five
kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as
much as they can eat.’
‘The master’s a screw,’ put in the counting house clerk.
‘Well, did you like their horses?’ asked Dolly.
‘The horses!—there’s no two opinions about them.
And the food was good. But it seemed to me sort of
dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don’t know what you
thought,’ he said, turning his handsome, good-natured
face to her.
‘I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?’
‘Eh, we must!’
On reaching home and finding everyone entirely
satisfactory and particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna
began with great liveliness telling them how she had
arrived, how warmly they had received her, of the luxury
and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and of their
recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said
against them.
‘One has to know Anna and Vronsky—I have got to
know him better now—to see how nice they are, and
how touching,’ she said, speaking now with perfect
sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction
and awkwardness she had experienced there.
Chapter 25
Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of
the winter in the country, living in just the same
condition, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It
was an understood thing between them that they should
not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived
alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the
house, that they could not stand this existence, and that
they would have to alter it.
Their life was apparently such that nothing better could
be desired. They had the fullest abundance of everything;
they had a child, and both had occupation. Anna devoted
just as much care to her appearance when they had no
visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of novels
and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered
all the books that were praised in the foreign papers and
reviews she received, and read them with that
concentrated attention which is only given to what is read
in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of interest
to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so
that he often went straight to her with questions relating
to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even with
questions relating to horse-breeding or sport. He was
amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was
disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts;
and she would find what he asked for in some book, and
show it to him.
The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She
did not merely assist, but planned and suggested a great
deal herself. But her chief thought was still of herself—
how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far she could make
up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated
this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had
become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time
he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold
him fast. As time went on, and he saw himself more and
more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever
growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to
try whether they hindered his freedom. Had it not been
for this growing desire to be free, not to have scenes every
time he wanted to go to the town to a meeting or a race,
Vronsky would have been perfectly satisfied with his life.
The role he had taken up, the role of a wealthy
landowner, one of that class which ought to be the very
heart of the Russian aristocracy, was entirely to his taste;
and now, after spending six months in that character, he
derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his
management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed
him more and more, was most successful. In spite of the
immense sums cost him by the hospital, by machinery, by
cows ordered from Switzerland, and many other things, he
was convinced that he was not wasting, but increasing his
substance. In all matters affecting income, the sales of
timber, wheat, and wool, the letting of lands, Vronsky was
hard as a rock, and knew well how to keep up prices. In
all operations on a large scale on this and his other estates,
he kept to the simplest methods involving no risk, and in
trifling details he was careful and exacting to an extreme
degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the
German steward, who would try to tempt him into
purchases by making his original estimate always far larger
than really required, and then representing to Vronsky that
he might get the thing cheaper, and so make a profit,
Vronsky did not give in. He listened to his steward, cros---amined
him, and only agreed to his suggestions when
the implement to be ordered or constructed was the very
newest, not yet known in Russia, and likely to excite
wonder. Apart from such exceptions, he resolved upon an
increased outlay only where there was a surplus, and in
making such an outlay he went into the minutest details,
and insisted on getting the very best for his money; so that
by the method on which he managed his affairs, it was
clear that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance.
In October there were the provincial elections in the
Kashinsky province, where were the estates of Vronsky,
Sviazhsky, Koznishev, Oblonsky, and a small part of
Levin’s land.
These elections were attracting public attention from
several circumstances connected with them, and also from
the people taking part in them. There had been a great
deal of talk about them, and great preparations were being
made for them. Persons who never attended the elections
were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from
abroad to attend these. Vronsky had long before promised
Sviazhsky to go to them. Before the elections Sviazhsky,
who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove over to fetch
Vronsky. On the day before there had been almost a
quarrel between Vronsky and Anna over this proposed
expedition. It was the very dullest autumn weather, which
is so dreary in the country, and so, preparing himself for a
struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold expression,
informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to
her before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the
information with great composure, and merely asked
when he would be back. He looked intently at her, at a
loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his look. He
knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and
knew that it only happened when she had determined
upon something without letting him know her plans. He
was afraid of this; but he was so anxious to avoid a scene
that he kept up appearances, and half sincerely believed in
what he longed to believe in—her reasonableness.
‘I hope you won’t be dull?’
‘I hope not,’ said Anna. ‘I got a box of books yesterday
from Gautier’s. No, I shan’t be dull.’
‘She’s trying to take that tone, and so much the better,’
he thought, ‘or else it would be the same thing over and
over again.’
And he set off for the elections without appealing to
her for a candid explanation. It was the first time since the
beginning of their intimacy that he had parted from her
without a full explanation. From one point of view this
troubled him, but on the other side he felt that it was
better so. ‘At first there will be, as this time, something
undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. I any
case I can give up anything for her, but not my masculine
independence,’ he thought.
Chapter 26
In September Levin moved to Moscow for Kitty’s
confinement. He had spent a whole month in Moscow
with nothing to do, when Sergey Ivanovitch, who had
property in the Kashinsky province, and took great
interest in the question of the approaching elections, made
ready to set off to the elections. He invited his brother,
who had a vote in the Seleznevsky district, to come with
him. Levin had, moreover, to transact in Kashin some
extremely important business relating to the wardship of
land and to the receiving of certain redemption money for
his sister, who was abroad.
Levin still hesitated, but Kitty, who saw that he was
bored in Moscow, and urged him to go, on her own
authority ordered him the proper nobleman’s uniform,
costing seven pounds. And that seven pounds paid for the
uniform was the chief cause that finally decided Levin to
go. He went to Kashin....
Levin had been six days in Kashin, visiting the assembly
each day, and busily engaged about his sister’s business,
which still dragged on. The district marshals of nobility
were all occupied with the elections, and it was impossible

to get the simplest thing done that depended upon the
court of wardship. The other matter, the payment of the
sums due, was met too by difficulties. After long
negotiations over the legal details, the money was at last
ready to be paid; but the notary, a most obliging person,
could not hand over the order, because it must have the
signature of the president, and the president, though he
had not given over his duties to a deputy, was at the
elections. All these worrying negotiations, this endless
going from place to place, and talking with pleasant and
excellent people, who quite saw the unpleasantness of the
petitioner’s position, but were powerless to assist him—all
these efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling of
misery in Levin akin to the mortifying helplessness one
experiences in dreams when one tries to use physical force.
He felt this frequently as he talked to his most goodnatured
solicitor. This solicitor did, it seemed, everything
possible, and strained every nerve to get him out of his
difficulties. ‘I tell you what you might try,’ he said more
than once; ‘go to so-and-so and so-and-so,’ and the
solicitor drew up a regular plan for getting round the fatal
point that hindered everything. But he would add
immediately, ‘It’ll mean some delay, anyway, but you
might try it.’ And Levin did try, and did go. Everyone was
kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to crop up
again in the end, and again to bar the way. What was
particularly trying, was that Levin could not make out
with whom he was struggling, to whose interest it was
that his business should not be done. That no one seemed
to know; the solicitor certainly did not know. If Levin
could have understood why, just as he saw why one can
only approach the booking office of a railway station in
single file, it would not have been so vexatious and
tiresome to him. But with the hindrances that confronted
him in his business, no one could explain why they
existed.
But Levin had changed a good deal since his marriage;
he was patient, and if he could not see why it was all
arranged like this, he told himself that he could not judge
without knowing all about it, and that most likely it must
be so, and he tried not to fret.
In attending the elections, too, and taking part in them,
he tried now not to judge, not to fall foul of them, but to
comprehend as fully as he could the question which was
so earnestly and ardently absorbing honest and excellent
men whom he respected. Since his marriage there had
been revealed to Levin so many new and serious aspects of
life that had previously, through his frivolous attitude to
them, seemed of no importance, that in the question of
the elections too he assumed and tried to find some serious
significance.
Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him the meaning and
object of the proposed revolution at the elections. The
marshal of the province in whose hands the law had placed
the control of so many important public functions—the
guardianship of wards (the very department which was
giving Levin so much trouble just now), the disposal of
large sums subscribed by the nobility of the province, the
high schools, female, male, and military, and popular
instruction on the new model, and finally, the district
council—the marshal of the province, Snetkov, was a
nobleman of the old school,—dissipating an immense
fortune, a good-hearted man, honest after his own fashion,
but utterly without any comprehension of the needs of
modern days. He always took, in every question, the side
of the nobility; he was positively antagonistic to the spread
of popular education, and he succeeded in giving a purely
party character to the district council which ought by
rights to be of such an immense importance. What was
needed was to put in his place a fresh, capable, perfectly
modern man, of contemporary ideas, and to frame their
policy so as from the rights conferred upon the nobles, not
as the nobility, but as an element of the district council, to
extract all the powers of self-government that could
possibly be derived from them. In the wealthy Kashinsky
province, which always took the lead of other provinces in
everything, there was now such a preponderance of forces
that this policy, once carried through properly there,
might serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia.
And hence the whole question was of the greatest
importance. It was proposed to elect as marshal in place of
Snetkov either Sviazhsky, or, better still, Nevyedovsky, a
former university professor, a man of remarkable
intelligence and a great friend of Sergey Ivanovitch.
The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a
speech to the nobles, urging them to elect the public
functionaries, not from regard for persons, but for the
service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping that the
honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as at
all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and
vindicate the exalted confidence of the monarch.
When he had finished with his speech, the governor
walked out of the hall, and the noblemen noisily and
eagerly—some even enthusiastically —followed him and
thronged round him while he put on his fur coat and
conversed amicably with the marshal of the province.
Levin, anxious to see into everything and not to miss
anything, stood there too in the crowd, and heard the
governor say: ‘Please tell Marya Ivanovna my wife is very
sorry she couldn’t come to the Home.’ And thereupon the
nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and
all drove off to the cathedral.
In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest and
repeating the words of the archdeacon, swore with most
terrible oaths to do all the governor had hoped they would
do. Church services always affected Levin, and as he
uttered the words ‘I kiss the cross,’ and glanced round at
the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he
felt touched.
On the second and third days there was business
relating to the finances of the nobility and the female high
school, of no importance whatever, as Sergey Ivanovitch
explained, and Levin, busy seeing after his own affairs, did
not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the auditing of
the marshal’s accounts took place at the high table of the
marshal of the province. And then there occurred the first
skirmish between the new party and the old. The
committee who had been deputed to verify the accounts
reported to the meeting that all was in order. The marshal
of the province got up, thanked the nobility for their
confidence, and shed tears. The nobles gave him a loud
welcome, and shook hands with him. But at that instant a
nobleman of Sergey Ivanovitch’s party said that he had
heard that the committee had not verified the accounts,
considering such a verification an insult to the marshal of
the province. One of the members of the committee
incautiously admitted this. Then a small gentleman, very
young-looking but very malignant, began to say that it
would probably be agreeable to the marshal of the
province to give an account of his expenditures of the
public moneys, and that the misplaced delicacy of the
members of the committee was depriving him of this
moral satisfaction. Then the members of the committee
tried to withdraw their admission, and Sergey Ivanovitch
began to prove that they must logically admit either that
they had verified the accounts or that they had not, and he
developed this dilemma in detail. Sergey Ivanovitch was
answered by the spokesman of the opposite party. Then
Sviazhsky spoke, and then the malignant gentleman again.
The discussion lasted a long time and ended in nothing.
Levin was surprised that they should dispute upon this
subject so long, especially as, when he asked Sergey
Ivanovitch whether he supposed that money had been
misappropriated, Sergey Ivanovitch answered:
‘Oh, no! He’s an honest man. But those old-fashioned
methods of paternal family arrangements in the
management of provincial affairs must be broken down.’
On the fifth day came the elections of the district
marshals. It was rather a stormy day in several districts. In
the Seleznevsky district Sviazhsky was elected
unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a dinner that
evening.
Chapter 27
The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal
of the province.
The rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen in
all sorts of uniforms. Many had come only for that day.
Men who had not seen each other for years, some from
the Crimea, some from Petersburg, some from abroad,
met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was much
discussion around the governor’s table under the portrait
of the Tsar.
The nobles, both in the larger and the smaller rooms,
grouped themselves in camps, and from their hostile and
suspicious glances, from the silence that fell upon them
when outsiders approached a group, and from the way
that some, whispering together, retreated to the farther
corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the
other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided
into two classes: the old and the new. The old were for
the most part either in old uniforms of the nobility,
buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or in their own
special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms. The
uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old
fashioned way with epaulets on their shoulders; they were
unmistakably tight and short in the waist, as though their
wearers had grown out of them. The younger men wore
the uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad
shoulders, unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms
with black collars and with the embroidered badges of
justices of the peace. To the younger men belonged the
court uniforms that here and there brightened up the
crowd.
But the division into young and old did not correspond
with the division of parties. Some of the young men, as
Levin observed, belonged to the old party; and some of
the very oldest noblemen, on the contrary, were
whispering with Sviazhsky, and were evidently ardent
partisans of the new party.
Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were
smoking and taking light refreshments, close to his own
friends, and listening to what they were saying, he
conscientiously exerted all his intelligence trying to
understand what was said. Sergey Ivanovitch was the
center round which the others grouped themselves. He
was listening at that moment to Sviazhsky and Hliustov,
the marshal of another district, who belonged to their
party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his district to
ask Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him
to do so, and Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan.
Levin could not make out why the opposition was to ask
the marshal to stand whom they wanted to supersede.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and
taking some lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a
gentleman of the bedchamber, wiping his lips with a
perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.
‘We are placing our forces,’ he said, pulling out his
whiskers, ‘Sergey Ivanovitch!’
And listening to the conversation, he supported
Sviazhsky’s contention.
‘One district’s enough, and Sviazhsky’s obviously of the
opposition,’ he said, words evidently intelligible to all
except Levin.
‘Why, Kostya, you here too! I suppose you’re
converted, eh?’ he added, turning to Levin and drawing
his arm through his. Levin would have been glad indeed
to be converted, but could not make out what the point
was, and retreating a few steps from the speakers, he
explained to Stepan Arkadyevitch his inability to
understand why the marshal of the province should be
asked to stand.
‘O sancta simplicitas!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and
briefly and clearly he explained it to Levin. If, as at
previous elections, all the districts asked the marshal of the
province to stand, then he would be elected without a
ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had agreed to
call upon him: if two refused to do so, Snetkov might
decline to stand at all; and then the old party might choose
another of their party, which would throw them
completely out in their reckoning. But if only one district,
Sviazhsky’s, did not call upon him to stand, Snetkov
would let himself be balloted for. They were even, some
of them, going to vote for him, and purposely to let him
get a good many votes, so that the enemy might be
thrown off the scent, and when a candidate of the other
side was put up, they too might give him some votes.
Levin understood to some extent, but not fully, and would
have put a few more questions, when suddenly everyone
began talking and making a noise and they moved towards
the big room.
‘What is it? eh? whom?’ ‘No guarantee? whose? what?’
‘They won’t pass him?’ ‘No guarantee?’ ‘They won’t let
Flerov in?’ ‘Eh, because of the charge against him?’ ‘Why,
at this rate, they won’t admit anyone. It’s a swindle!’ ‘The
law!’ Levin heard exclamations on all sides, and he moved
into the big room together with the others, all hurrying
somewhere and afraid of missing something. Squeezed by
the crowding noblemen, he drew near the high table
where the marshal of the province, Sviazhsky, and the
other leaders were hotly disputing about something.
Chapter 28
Levin was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing
heavily and hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick
boots were creaking, prevented him from hearing
distinctly. He could only hear the soft voice of the marshal
faintly, then the shrill voice of the malignant gentleman,
and then the voice of Sviazhsky. They were disputing, as
far as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put
on the act and the exact meaning of the words: ‘liable to
be called up for trial.’
The crowd parted to make way for Sergey Ivanovitch
approaching the table. Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till the
malignant gentleman had finished speaking, said that he
thought the best solution would be to refer to the act
itself, and asked the secretary to find the act. The act said
that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a
ballot.
Sergey Ivanovitch read the act and began to explain its
meaning, but at that point a tall, stout, round-shouldered
landowner, with dyed whiskers, in a tight uniform that cut
the back of his neck, interrupted him. He went up to the
table, and striking it with his finger ring, he shouted
loudly: ‘A ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more
talking!’ Then several voices began to talk all at once, and
the tall nobleman with the ring, getting more and more
exasperated, shouted more and more loudly. But it was
impossible to make out what he said.
He was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch
had proposed; but it was evident that he hated him and all
his party, and this feeling of hatred spread through the
whole party and roused in opposition to it the same
vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the
other side. Shouts were raised, and for a moment all was
confusion, so that the marshal of the province had to call
for order.
‘A ballot! A ballot! Every nobleman sees it! We shed
our blood for our country!... The confidence of the
monarch.... No checking the accounts of the marshal; he’s
not a cashier.... But that’s not the point.... Votes, please!
Beastly!...’ shouted furious and violent voices on all sides.
Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than
their words. They expressed the most implacable hatred.
Levin did not in the least understand what was the matter,
and he marveled at the passion with which it was disputed
whether or not the decision about Flerov should be put to
the vote. He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him
afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the
public good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that
to get rid of the marshal it was necessary to have a
majority of votes; that to get a majority of votes it was
necessary to secure Flerov’s right to vote; that to secure
the recognition of Flerov’s right to vote they must decide
on the interpretation to be put on the act.
‘And one vote may decide the whole question and one
must be serious and consecutive, if one wants to be of use
in public life,’ concluded Sergey Ivanovitch. But Levin
forgot all that, and it was painful to him to see all these
excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such an
unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from
this painful feeling he went away into the other room
where there was nobody except the waiters at the
refreshment bar. Seeing the waiters busy over washing up
the crockery and setting in order their plates and wine
glasses, seeing their calm and cheerful faces, Levin felt an
unexpected sense of relief as though he had come out of a
stuffy room into the fresh air. He began walking up and
down, looking with pleasure at the waiters. He particularly
liked the way one gray-whiskered waiter, who showed his
scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered at by
them, was teaching them how to fold up napkins properly.
Levin was just about to enter into conversation with the
old waiter, when the secretary of the court of wardship, a
little old man whose specialty it was to know all the
noblemen of the province by name and patronymic, drew
him away.
‘Please come, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ he said, ‘your
brother’s looking for you. They are voting on the legal
point.’
Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and
followed his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table
where Sviazhsky was standing with a significant and
ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and sniffing at it.
Sergey Ivanovitch put his hand into the box, put the ball
somewhere, and making room for Levin, stopped. Levin
advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and
much embarrassed, he turned to Sergey Ivanovitch with
the question, ‘Where am I to put it?’ He asked this softly,
at a moment when there was talking going on near, so
that he had hoped his question would not be overheard.
But the persons speaking paused, and his improper
question was overheard. Sergey Ivanovitch frowned.
‘That is a matter for each man’s own decision,’ he said
severely.
Several people smiled. Levin crimsoned, hurriedly
thrust his hand under the cloth, and put the ball to the
right as it was in his right hand. Having put it in, he
recollected that he ought to have thrust his left hand too,
and so he thrust it in though too late, and, still more
overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat into the
background.
‘A hundred and twenty-six for admission! Ninety-eight
against!’ sang out the voice of the secretary, who could not
pronounce the letter r. Then there was a laugh; a button
and two nuts were found in the box. The nobleman was
allowed the right to vote, and the new party had
conquered.
But the old party did not consider themselves
conquered. Levin heard that they were asking Snetkov to
stand, and he saw that a crowd of noblemen was
surrounding the marshal, who was saying something.
Levin went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the
noblemen of the province had placed in him, the affection
they had shown him, which he did not deserve, as his only
merit had been his attachment to the nobility, to whom he
had devoted twelve years of service. Several times he
repeated the words: ‘I have served to the best of my
powers with truth and good faith, I value your goodness
and thank you,’ and suddenly he stopped short from the
tears that choked him, and went out of the room.
Whether these tears came from a sense of the injustice
being done him, from his love for the nobility, or from
the strain of the position he was placed in, feeling himself
surrounded by enemies, his emotion infected the assembly,
the majority were touched, and Levin felt a tenderness for
Snetkov.
In the doorway the marshal of the province jostled
against Levin.
‘Beg pardon, excuse me, please,’ he said as to a
stranger, but recognizing Levin, he smiled timidly. It
seemed to Levin that he would have liked to say
something, but could not speak for emotion. His face and
his whole figure in his uniform with the crosses, and white
trousers striped with braid, as he moved hurriedly along,
reminded Levin of some hunted beast who sees that he is
in evil case. This expression in the marshal’s face was
particularly touching to Levin, because, only the day
before, he had been at his house about his trustee business
and had seen him in all his grandeur, a kind-hearted,
fatherly man. The big house with the old family furniture;
the rather dirty, far from stylish, but respectful footmen,
unmistakably old house serfs who had stuck to their
master; the stout, good-natured wife in a cap with lace and
a Turkish shawl, petting her pretty grandchild, her
daughter’s daughter; the young son, a sixth form high
school boy, coming home from school, and greeting his
father, kissing his big hand; the genuine, cordial words and
gestures of the old man—all this had the day before roused
an instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in Levin.
This old man was a touching and pathetic figure to Levin
now, and he longed to say something pleasant to him.
‘So you’re sure to be our marshal again,’ he said.
‘It’s not likely,’ said the marshal, looking round with a
scared expression. ‘I’m worn out, I’m old. If there are men
younger and more deserving than I, let them serve.’
And the marshal disappeared through a side door.
The most solemn moment was at hand. They were to
proceed immediately to the election. The leaders of both
parties were reckoning white and black on their fingers.
The discussion upon Flerov had given the new party
not only Flerov’s vote, but had also gained time for them,
so that they could send to fetch three noblemen who had
been rendered unable to take part in the elections by the
wiles of the other party. Two noble gentlemen, who had a
weakness for strong drink, had been made drunk by the
partisans of Snetkov, and a third had been robbed of his
uniform.
On learning this, the new party had made haste, during
the dispute about Flerov, to send some of their men in a
sledge to clothe the stripped gentleman, and to bring along
one of the intoxicated to the meeting.
‘I’ve brought one, drenched him with water,’ said the
landowner, who had gone on this errand, to Sviazhsky.
‘He’s all right? he’ll do.’
‘Not too drunk, he won’t fall down?’ said Sviazhsky,
shaking his head.
‘No, he’s first-rate. If only they don’t give him any
more here.... I’ve told the waiter not to give him anything
on any account.’